Comment by randlet | Hacker News Reader

Comment by randlet | Hacker News Reader

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"You implied that cartoonish violence like Contra will have substantially negative psychological effects on children."

I do believe they have negative effects on children but I don't believe that extends to school shootings.

Are you sure it was a lack of video games and movies that let you to have trouble forming relationships? My anecdote is that even though I had virtually no video games (except at friends houses) or television until highschool I was still able to form (and maintain for 30+ years) friendships with my peers who had very different rules than I did, and had a full social life all through school (I do consider myself a strong introvert and have had social anxiety issues in past, but I would never point at lack of TV/games growing up as a root cause).

Like you said, neither one of us has hard data, only anecdotal stories with different outcomes for similar "media" parenting strategies.

Even if there is no negative consequence on an individual child relative to their peer group, I still believe (can't support with evidence obviously) that exposing children to violence in video games and movies is a net societal negative that I don't intend to contribute to.

edit: Just wanted to say I appreciate your perspective as it's one I hadn't even considered before and gave me some food for thought.

Fair enough, I imagine it largely depends on peer group as well. Literally everyone I had anything remotely in common with growing up played video games, watched adult-ish TV, saw PG-13+ movies, etc from a young age. My parents outright refused to let me have any of those things, and as a result no one wanted to come over and play at my house, I always sucked when playing with the other kids at birthday parties, I wasn't allowed to see any PG-13+ movies with them, etc. It got to the point where I actually started academically teaching myself the rules of video games by reading websites and strategy guides, and memorizing summaries of TV shows and movies just so I could participate in conversations at lunch. I'm not saying it was the only issue (I was meh on sports and shy in general), but it was definitely a big hurdle. Like being the only one forbidden from playing cards at a poker tournament where literally everybody else is playing.

If my peer group's interests had been more varied maybe it would have worked out differently. So I imagine it depends on the school/neighborhood.

Edit: At any rate, I appreciate your perspective as well. An upbringing without TV (let alone the rest) where it wasn't a hindrance is about as alien to me as it gets, pretty sure both my parents' families had TVs growing up. :) As it stands I see such things as ultimately harmless, but I'll admit that if I didn't experience media as such a crucial social lubricant, I'd probably strictly limit (although I'd stop short of forbidding) my kids from the more violent stuff as well, at least until they were 8+, just in case.

One aspect I find interesting about this argument is that children are actually much more cruel than adults seem to remember or realize. Kids will often expose their classmates to real violence (whether physical or psychological) at an early age and without the input of fictional violence to guide them. Of course, it depends on the specific school and I was lucky enough to grow up in a sheltered environment where this wasn't frequent.

The danger of movies and games inspiring violence seems comparatively meager. The risk of wasting time through addiction to these things is the more immediate danger.

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